SUMMER Opera Festival time is on its way, kicking off next month with Glorious Glyndebourne. This will be its 78th Festival, opening on May 20 and running until August.

Its first production is a new one of Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen, directed by Melly Still.

Glyndebourne’s setting in the South Downs has proved an inspiration for Melly, returning after her 2008 success when she directed an opera by another Czech composer, Dvorak’s Rusalka.

“The Cunning Little Vixen reflects Janacek’s love of nature and I can hear the sounds of his music among the birds and insects in the countryside around Glyndebourne,” she told me during a break from rehearsals.

“I grew up in Sussex and the setting is very atmospheric. Working at Glyndebourne is like being in an artists’ retreat, with everyone focusing on the work, practically and creatively. I am working with dancers and singers of such virtuosity I cannot get used to it.”

The opera sounds as if it has dream casting. Lucy Crowe and Emma Bell, two leading young British sopranos, are taking the leading roles of the Vixen and her consort the Fox. Sergei Leiferkus sings the role of the Gamekeeper, who takes the Vixen into his house as an orphaned cub until the day she chases his hens and runs off into the wild. Music director Vladimir Jurowski will be conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Working at Glyndebourne is like being in an artists’ retreat

Dvorak’s Rusalka

Melly, director and designer of the acclaimed Coram Boy at the National Theatre, lists among her work several plays designed to appeal to the young, such as The Jungle Book, Grimm Tales and Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Notwithstanding its cast of Foxes, Badger, Frog, Grasshopper and other wild creatures, Melly says The Cunning Little Vixen is decidedly not another children’s opera. It was written by Janacek on the eve of his 70th birthday, when he was coming to terms with his years and his death.

“It is a very adult piece, though there are children and animals in it,” she says. “The story is about humans, about the gamekeeper and his friends. It is about mortality and has an extraordinarily delicate theme that is really moving.

“The three men as they grow older become curmudgeonly, lonely, drunk; angry with their wives or bitter about not being married. Foxes don’t endure that human suffering. I first saw Cunning Little Vixen in Jonathan Miller’s production at Glyndebourne when I was 14, and I am happy to bring it to life so that children can identify with the animals’ relentless desire for joy and liberty and fun.”

Melly is working with set designer Tom Pye in her second directing role at Glyndebourne. Her production of Rusalka, Dvorak’s fairytale about a water nymph, will be revived for Glyndebourne on Tour in the autumn.

Other new productions this summer are Michael Grandage’s eagerly awaited take on The Marriage of Figaro, with the excellent Sally Matthews as the Countess, and director Laurent Pelly’s double bill of Ravel’s L’heure Espagnole and L’enfant et Les Sortileges, which should have an authentic French flavour. There are also revivals of three of Glyndebourne’s most popular productions: Rossini’s La Cenerentola, Puccini’s La Bohème and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen.

STnS Glyndebourne Festival 2012 is open for booking, tickets from £10 to £230. Tickets are available for all six operas. Bookings: Box Office 01273 815000 or glyndebourne.com